Chapter 3
The next morning, I found Dad in the kitchen with a notebook.
He had made two columns. One held the cost of my dress and the alterations. The other held the information he could find about Mia’s handbag.
I sat across from him.
“You’re going to pay her back?”
“I damaged it. I’m responsible for that.”
“She cut my dress first.”
“I know. I should have stopped and thought before I picked up the scissors.”
I had seen Mia’s face when he ruined the bag. Part of me had felt glad. Another part had been scared of the anger in the room.
Dad closed the notebook.
“I can ask Mia to pay for your dress and still admit I was wrong about the bag,” he said. “I don’t want you thinking that hurting someone’s things is how we make them understand us.”
I looked toward the stairs. Mia had left a hair clip on one of the steps. Yesterday morning, I would have picked it up and put it outside her room.
“I want her to understand,” I said.
“So do I.”
Dad called Vanessa while I was there. He asked if they could meet at a café without Mia or me. Vanessa insisted on coming to the house.
“No,” he said. “I want to talk where we can leave if this turns into another fight.”
I heard her voice rise through the phone. Dad waited until she stopped.
“At two,” he said. “I’ll see you there.”
After the call, he asked whether I wanted Janelle to come over. I said yes. I needed to spend a few hours being a new graduate instead of the reason everyone was arguing.
Janelle brought a photo strip from the ceremony. In one frame, I was laughing at something she’d said. I barely remembered the moment.
“You were happy,” she told me.
“For a few seconds.”
“You earned those seconds. You’ll have more.”
We sat on my floor and looked through college emails. I had a place at a state university two hours away, with a scholarship that covered tuition but not housing. Dad and I had been trying to work out the rest.
I had not told Mia the amount of the scholarship. She had a way of turning good news into an argument about what she deserved.
“Did she know you were waiting on the housing grant?” Janelle asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Janelle glanced at my desk. “Make sure your papers are where you can find them.”
“Why?”
“I saw Mia in the school office last week. She asked someone when scholarship decisions were mailed.”
I felt a prickle of unease.
Mia went to the same school, but she was in the year below us. She had no reason to ask about my mail.
After Janelle left, I checked the folder where I kept my college papers. My admission letter was there. So was the scholarship notice.
The housing grant application was missing.
I searched every drawer, then under the bed. I found old receipts and a missing earring, but no application.
Dad came home from meeting Vanessa and found me sitting among the papers.
“What happened?”
“I can’t find the form I filled out for the housing grant.”
“Did you send it?”
“I was going to mail it Monday. The deadline is Friday.”
He helped me search. We checked the kitchen, the hall table, and the stack of graduation cards. Nothing.
“Could it be online?” he asked.
“The application is. I can print another one.”
“That’s good.”
I should have been relieved. I kept thinking about Janelle seeing Mia at the school office.
“How was the meeting?” I asked.
Dad sat on the edge of my bed.
“Vanessa says Mia was angry because we spent so much time planning your graduation.”
“Her birthday party was last month.”
“I said that.”
“What did Vanessa say?”
“She said Mia has felt overlooked since you got into college. Then she said you provoke her.”
I waited.
“I told her I’ve heard that explanation too many times,” Dad said. “It doesn’t excuse cutting your dress.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t think she wants to.”
He told me Vanessa wanted to come back with Mia that night. Dad had refused. He had asked her to think about whether she could live with us while taking what Mia did seriously.
I looked at the papers around me. “What if she says yes just to come home?”
“Then I’ll watch what she does.”
I printed a new housing application and filled it out while Dad made dinner. He checked that I had signed every page. We put it in an envelope and left it on the kitchen counter so we could mail it together the next morning.
At nine, Vanessa texted Dad. Mia needed a textbook from her room. Could they stop by for five minutes?
Dad read the message aloud. “You can go to Grandma’s if you’d rather not see them.”
“I’m staying here.”
He told Vanessa she could come at ten the next morning, while he was home.
Before bed, I went downstairs for water. The envelope lay beside Dad’s keys. I picked it up and checked the address once more.
Then I saw a mark on the corner.
Three tiny cuts, as if the edge had caught between scissor blades.
May you like
I stared at it for a long time. I couldn’t prove Mia had touched my first application.
I slipped the envelope into my bag and took it upstairs. Whatever happened when she came for her textbook, I was keeping this one with me.
